Bob Copper

A repeat of the legendary folk singer Bob Copper who discusses his life singing traditional music with his family who can be traced back to the days when the Spanish Armada sailed by the coast of Sussex. Bob Copper died on 29th March

Transcript

Andrew Ford: For hundreds of years, the Copper family of Rottingdean have sung for their own pleasure, and for the pleasure of the people of Rottingdean. They sing at parties and in pubs. Their recording career dates back a mere 52 years. The BBC first recorded them in 1951, and they've gone on to become stars, particularly in the United States, where they tour every year.

Today, the Copper family consists of Bob, at the age of 88 and his son and daughter, and his son-in-law, and the four of them sing the same songs that they've been singing for these centuries. There's about 65 Copper songs and they sing them in harmony, which is a style specific to the south-east of England, in English folk songs at any rate.

There's a new CD called Come Write Me Down, on Topic Records, which features some of their earliest recordings, and so before we hear my conversation with the 88-year-old Bob Copper (I visited him recently at Peacehaven, just outside Rottingdean on the Sussex coast) let's go back in time, 52 years, and hear Bob and his father Jim, singing one of the most famous English folk song, The Claudy Banks.

Bob Copper: I was born in 1915, so my first memories are round about 1919, 1920, and I was a little boy, and I was born in a farm cottage at Rottingdean, and Dad was a farm worker; it was just a bailiff's job actually, he'd taken the farm bailiff's job over, farm foreman, that is, from his father the year I was born, 1915. But my earliest memories really, are winter evenings, particularly, sitting round the fire on a winter's night, and before wireless or radio, and we used to just have a song to pass the time away.

We weren't much of a card-playing family, funnily enough, but we'd sit there, Mum would be on one side of the fire doing needlework, darning socks and mending shirts and whatever, and Dad would be on the other side making rabbit nets, or what-have-you. And Grandad lived with us, because Granny had died, and he'd be in his favourite chair over by the dresser, and he'd just sit there, nice and steady, nice and quiet. Not a lot of talking went on, you didn't talk unless you had something to say, you know, you didn't make idle conversation.

Andrew Ford: And there was no television to fill in the gaps.

Bob Copper: He'd just sit there nice and quietly, the old clock would be ticking away you know, tick-tock, tick-tock. But Grandad might say, 'Let's have a song, isn't us'? 'Yes, may as well,' Dad would say. 'What shall we have, then? Claudy Banks?' So the old man would say, 'No, we sang that last week.' So they'd decide on a song and off we'd go. Uncle John, Dad's brother, was shepherd, and that's his crook over in the corner there, by the way, and he used to stay with us a lot, because unfortunately Aunt Jennie, his wife, was not a very well woman, she died in her late 30s. But spent a lot of time with us, and Grandad would say to his son, John, that's the shepherd, because they'd be sitting there in their old working clothes, in their socks, they'd take their hobnailed boots off, and wouldn't have any slippers, they'd just sit there in their socks. He'd say, Grandad would say, 'Strike sound, Johnny, strike sound.' So Johnny would take his pipe out of his mouth and get a note, and off they'd go, and we'd all join in. You know.

Andrew Ford: And everyone would sing, you'd sing as a little boy?

Bob Copper: Everybody sang. We used to work particularly well. A little bit older and I was in the village choir for about 8, 9, 10, that sort of thing, before my voice broke, and my sister, she was in the choir too. She's still alive, she's 92, lives down the road. And we used to pipe our little descants in and that sort of thing, and that's the way you'd pass the evening away.

Andrew Ford: Did anyone tell you how to do it, or did you just pick up the harmony? Was it instinctive, knowing how to, as you say, pipe in a descant?

Bob Copper: Well nobody told us, oh good lord no. I think you picked it up from your music at shows, that's why our tunes and the way we treat them is the way all the old people did treat them; we'd sing them a little bit faster now, because we've got a captive audience, but in those days, that's the point we've just made really, that everybody was singing, and the pleasure was in the singing. So it didn't matter if you dragged it out, if somebody put a new harmony in, old Grandad would nod, and you'd go over the last two lines of a verse again, just for the sheer joy of those harmonies blending in, you know. And you'd drag it out slower than ever. But when you've got an audience, captive in a hall, or on the radio or recorded, you've got to move it along, and that's the only difference we made; we do sing them a little bit faster than we used to. But not tremendously so. But the harmonies themselves have really got what I would call a hymnal quality, they sounded as though they were inspired by church music. That's where the musical influences I think have come from, this is only what I've thought of. I didn't think of this as a kid, I just did it, you know, because it was there to be done. If I thought at all, I thought everybody sang songs at night, you know, it wasn't unusual, it just was practically every night.

Andrew Ford: The use of harmony is actually common to this area really isn't it? It's not something you find necessarily in other parts of the British Isles.

Bob Copper: No, it's generally speaking, unusual. There were two other sources I know of, one at East Chiltrington, just over the hill there, and the other one was at Exet, sorry, yes, on the coast road, and there were a couple of blacksmith brothers, they sang in harmony and then there were these two old chaps up at East Chiltrington, a pub called The Sportsman, they used to sing in harmony. And I think they were recorded, Pete Kennedy I think recorded them. And they are in the BBC Library archives somewhere. But the harmonies really, that was a specialty of my Grandfather and his brother Tom. The first journal of the Folksong Society, they had six songs collected from Grandad and his brother Tom, and they are in harmony and she said, Kate Lee, who collected them, said that it was delightful for her to do. And somebody took the lead and another one took the under part of the song. She describes the harmonies in words, and put them down in musical notation. Mind you, there are some that don't lend themselves to harmonies, that don't get sung so much, unfortunately, but we are, if we're known at all, it is as harmony singers really.

Andrew Ford: The other thing that you do that seems to be a Copper family tradition, maybe you can tell me if it is, is that very often with the third line of a song that you're singing in harmony, you don't sing it in harmony and you split the line half-way.

Bob Copper: That was a typical point, a factor, that was Grandad, and as you said it, I can see in my mind's eye Grandad on one side of the fire, Uncle Tom on the other, you know. (SINGS) 'And unto you, I relate the same', and they catch each other's eyes and it was a conversation, it was typical, it was just the way, a little quirk they got, the fashion, and it worked, and that's the way they always did it. You stopped the harmonies, but that little conversation, but I can see the affectionate look between them, as they loved it. Well you only sing because you enjoy it, don't you?

Andrew Ford: Well in those days that's true, you did sing because you enjoyed it, but of course the Copper family then began to attract the interest of people who came to collect your songs and to record your songs, and people wanted you to sing on the radio; did that change things?

Bob Copper: Yes, yes it did. Not the music, only the thing I've already mentioned about singing slightly quicker, but it changed things. It made us..... it sharpened our interest. We never lost interest, in fact Ron and I, my cousin Ron, that's Uncle John's son, the shepherd's son, was about 18 months older than me, now longer with us, I'm afraid; but he had that lovely bass voice, he's on Come Write Me Down CD, a great voice, of course it was lovely. When our voices first broke, he got this tremendous reverberating voice, and I remember we used to as kids, arms round each other, singing when we were 16 or 17, have a few pots of beer, long before we should have done, really. And when he was singing, I could feel his voice vibrating in my chest, it was so low, it was a sort of buzz, you know, absolutely tremendous, and I know we made a vow, because we loved the old songs, and then if we used to go out with the local pub to a darts match or something like that, on the way back we'd drink plenty of beer, but we always drank singing beer, not fighting beer, that's a very important distinction. It doesn't matter how much singing beer you have, but you don't want any fighting beer. And of course all our contemporaries, they loved us to lead the singing, they'd all join in, but we'd start off on Claudy, or Spencer the Rover or something, they'd say, 'Oh shut up, we don't want that bloody row, let's have Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes, and things like that', and so we had to sing that for them, you know. But we used to love to keep the old songs going, and when we were out rabbiting on Sunday mornings, or mushrooming over the hills and that sort of thing, or even down prawning or shrimping down on the beach, on the foreshore, early Sunday morning, 'Let's have a rattle up, shall we?' We'd get our heads together and have a good old sing, just for the sheer joy of it, where nobody could stop us, nobody criticise us, only the seagulls you know.

SINGING

Andrew Ford: So what would you say then is a Copper Family song, Bob? Would you say that there is such a thing? Is there a type of song that the Copper Family specialises in?

Bob Copper: Well I think we ought to start very - the man who really is responsible and to whom we owe all the credit of getting these songs together is my grandfather, James. He was born in Rottingdean, the same village; the family have been in the village for a long, long time; the first entry of the Copper family in Rottingdean church records is in September, 1593 when Edward Copper got married to a Cicely Balde, a French Norman name was that. But 1593 was five years after the Spanish Armada went up the Channel, and this is my theory, I've got no proof of it, it's a long time ago, 400 year ago, but I've thought that Edward Copper was of marriageable age so he must have been 18 or 20 or something, so five years before that, when he was about 13 or 14, he'd have been up on the hill as a shepherd boy or something, and could well have seen and probably did see the Armada go by. Quite a thought. I'm not saying he did, but he was in the village at the time, we know. And there's nothing else to look at, there's no trees out there so he'd see them.

Andrew Ford: Well you can't prove it, but no-one can disprove it.

Bob Copper: Well that's it, absolutely. No, Grandad started full-time work on the hills as a shepherd boy when he was 8 years old. He was born in 1845, and he went all through the farm, it was basically a sheep farm. It's down land, as you know, 3,000 acre farm which is big for this country, a very big farm, a thousand of that was arable land in the valleys and the rest on the top of the crests of the hills was sheep, what they call sheep run. Pretty poor old soil because these hills are chalk hills and if you look at it, it's all chalk, you look at a 100 foot of chalk and there's only about a foot or two at the most, of soil at the top. You can see it by the cliffs, there's a picture. And the only way they could possibly do it is to work with the sheep, and they had a four-course shift, I won't go into too much detail, but it was one crop, the crops followed the sheep round to fertilise it, and without that, this is before the use of artificial manures, they had the sheep as product for wool and meat of course, but also to keep the arable crops going, and in fact when Dad was a boy about 1890, he was born in 1882, there were government officials came round to the villages like Rottingdean and went to the schools and then to the parents of boys, where they got boys just leaving school, teenaged, and with a sheep farming background, to go out to Patagonia to sheep farm out there. And Dad, very keen, he wanted to go. He was a kid about 14, 15, and he very much wanted to go for the adventure of it, but because his father who as I say started as a shepherd boy, he worked his way right up to bailiff, and had taken the bailiff's job over, but Dad was being schooled to take that job over, and they wouldn't let him go, and he was very upset about that. And I remember back in the '30s when these men were coming back. They'd gone out as boys to Patagonia and some had done well, and some hadn't done well, they'd been on the booze and that sort of thing, and that's when it all came out. I didn't know about Dad wanting to go until these men were coming back, and I was in the barber's shop at that time, and I used to shave and listen to their stories, tell Dad this......

But as I say, I tell you all that because it's a sheep farming area. Now going back to what the songs are, Grandad obviously had got a very good ear, he also had a good bass voice, and he was renowned locally, with his brother Tom, for singing at harvest suppers and sheep shearing feasts and that sort of thing, or any time he'd give you a song. And he built up a collection of songs, most of them in the early part of the 19th century, 1820, 1830, the bulk of them about that time, some a little bit earlier. We got one Lord ballad, Lord Thomas that was sung by Stevie Barrow I remember him, he was a shepherd, and that was a Lord ballad, it goes back of course as you know to the Crusades. So that was the oldest song we know, but the bulk of them were in the first half of the 1800s, and he'd obviously got a very good ear for a tune, Grandad, and as he worked up and became bailiff, under foreman then foreman and bailiff, there were 60 to 65 men and boys permanently employed on the farm and he was a good chap, they all respected him very much, he was very much respected old Grandad, Old Brass, they used to call him, typical turn of Sussex wit ..... copper was brass.

I remember, a couple, three years ago we were out in America and a lady put her hand up. I said, 'Yes, Ma'am?' And she said, 'Mr Copper, can you tell you why your grandfather was called Brasser?' I said, 'Well, with the greatest respect, Madam, I shouldn't have thought you'd need a degree in metallurgy to work that one out.' And there was a pause, and she said, 'Oh, got it, I got it. Brasser, Copper, Copper, Brasser.' But it was rather fun. Now he could see when he'd become bailiff on the farm, his brother Tom had left the farm, he'd been carter, head carter, saved up his money and took the tenancy of one of the local pubs, and so that was, it's still there, The Black Horse, we were there for my birthday last week. Anyway, he could see the value of keeping the men happy, you know. He used to organise the distribution of blankets and coal and that in the winter to the poor people in the village. He didn't give it to them, that was via the Big House, the William Browns and the Beard family were the best, a Quaker family, but he did the organising and who should have and who shouldn't. And of course they employed 60, it was a small village then, bigger now. But 60, 65 men and boys permanently employed means that almost the whole village was employed on the farm. There were some in the local joiner's and wheelwrights, and building and construction, but otherwise. But the point I'm trying to make I think is really that though it's right on the coast, it was never a fishing village. I've seen it described as a fishing village; rubbish. The reason for that, you're on a lee shore and the first bit of blow from the sou'west, which is your prevailing wind, you've got to pull your boat right up out of the wave because otherwise you're going to lose it. There's no mooring facilities, there's no quay, there's nothing like that, you get all the wind smack in the kisser as it comes in across from the sea. And so you can only use light boats, dinghies, up to about 12, 14 foot, so a couple of you can pull it up onto the sea wall, out of the way of the storm if it blows up. So it was never a fishing village. A bit of lobster and that sort of thing, of course, you know, but it was never a fishing village, never an industry in any way.

But through the year, there was Spud Planting Saturday, they used to get together down at Uncle Tom's pub after; the farmer would allow every man so much land to put his taters in, so you could grow, and use horses and plough, so you could plough up the land, plough your taters in and then later on, another Saturday, plough them up and dig them and take them away. And you could buy the seed taters through him at cost price and all that sort of thing, and that was done on a certain Saturday afternoon, and that was Spud Planting Saturday. And on the evening, they'd all go down to Uncle Tom's pub and that would be Tater Beer night they used to call that. And they'd all chuck in so much, I forget the actual amounts now offhand, but into a bowl. A number of rods that they'd planted with taters that afternoon, they'd throw the pennies in to cover it, and that would get the beer pots going round, and then of course they sang the old songs.

Well, being farm men, (I'm gradually getting round to your point as to what sort of songs they sang, but very gradually). But being farm men, so many of the songs were about the work they did, and the different jobs through the course of the year, about haying time, and harvest time and so on and so on. So inevitably there's love songs of course. The notable thing about them is that there were no protest songs. Life was hard, life was rough, they were very poor, not 'they', we were very poor in terms of money but we had a lot going, because everybody had their garden patch, an allotment, that sort of thing, we bought a cottage, there's a bungalow built on it now but, so we had plenty of garden, and you could grow all the vegetables you wanted, the more energetic you were, the more stuff and better stuff you got. And we could always supplement the diet with rabbits, go rabbiting, and fish, and even lobsters. By the way I sounding, we lived like kings. But we were poor in terms of money but there was no sign, and this goes back before my time, and it comes through in these songs, I think, even in Grandad's time, in the early part of the 19th century, when in East Anglia and Dorset, things were very, very bad, and there was near starvation. It was really bad, the tyrannical treatment they got from the farmers. But we were very fortunate in this area, in Rottingdean, because for a period of 400 or 500 years the landowners had been Quakers, the Beard family, and that was right up to Dad's time. By the time I was - because I did all the boy's jobs on the farm, but by that time, it was Brown. But he was good, he kept up the old traditions. But the Beard family, they never stood anybody off during the winter, in the bad weather, they made work for them. Like putting up fences or whitewashing, limewash, we used to make up limewash, limewash the cow stalls, making thatching rods, anything. He'd make work in the dry and so there was a trickle of money going in all the winter, right the way through. In fact there's a song that proves that with the Threshing Song. At the time, the threshing drum you know, when it was first invented was about 1830, that threatened the livelihood of the flail threshers, used to go two to a barn, there was about six or seven barns around Rottingdean, in the village, around the village, threshing barns, and there'd be two men go in about October, and they'd be right into March. And as fast as they'd thresh one, another stack would be brought in, and you know, all the way through. So they were seen as a threat to the livelihood of the old flail threshers, and as a result of that, there was a lot of protest, and there were gangs of protests used to go, in the words of one block I remember, 'cut a swathe of destruction' right across the Weald of Kent and Sussex. With burning wrecks, smashing machines, and quite a lot of physical violence, and it was organised under a man called (he called himself) Captain Swing, I suppose 'Swing' from the swinging action of the flail, and I think it's probably a nom de plume. I think probably there were several Captain Swings, it was a kind of code to get a gang together and Captain Swing was their boss. But they were rough.

Now while that was going on, Grandad, who was born in 1845 and grew up in the '50s and that sort of thing, he used to sing a song and in Rottingdean they sang a song in praise of the threshing machine, which proves the point I've been making. So they didn't fear the threshing machine, because they wouldn't be stood off, but it saved a lot of backbreaking work, and so they sang:

It's all very well to have a machine

To thresh your wheat and your barley clean.

To thresh it and wim it all fit for sale

And go off to market all brisk and well.

Singing rumbledum-derry-flare-up Mary,

Make her old table shine.

And the manner who made her,

He made it so well,

He made every cog and wheel to tell.

And so on, and so on. Singing in praise of it. So as I say were very poor, and hard worked in exposed conditions, not saying life was easy, but there was a certain contentment which comes through in these songs, and the more you study them, you see that they talk about the birds that sang rather, about the birds and the bees and the sun coming up over the hill, and life wasn't too bad. And it comes through, doesn't it?

SONG SUNG

Andrew Ford: We've talked about the differences between your singing at home and then actually performing, and suddenly being increasingly in demand. Do you remember the first broadcast that the Copper Family gave?

Bob Copper: Very well indeed, yes. It was at a place called Gevington, just close to Eastbourne, in East Sussex, at a pub called The Seven Bells, and it was in August 1950, and it was amazing. It was in a series called Country Magazine, and they used to go out, live, it was all live broadcasts in those days and they used to go out to different villages, mining villages up north, fishing villages down in the West Country, interviewing miners, fishermen, various trades and that sort of thing, and this was in a little downling village called Gevington near Eastbourne in Sussex. And we were invited along to sing a couple of songs. And this had been going on for a long time and they used to introduce a local traditional song, and one of the producers, Francis Dillon, he used to put in traditional music. He had Irish blood in his veins, he loved traditional music. But of course in those days they had it sung by a professional singer. This producer, David Thompson, he'd heard Dad and I sing, and he wanted to put us on air, let the people themselves sing, but it was a big innovation; things were still pretty sticky in the BBC, a bit toffee-nosed as we call it now. It makes you realise, it's quite a long time, it's over 50 years ago, but it's changed so much. So instead of one song spot, he had two. He had both of our songs. He got Robin Irwin, he was Irish, a light baritone, lovely voice, lovely chap, and he sang You Seamen Bold, about the ocean, and made a very good job of it. And in this particular program, he had two song spots, and then he put us on singing Claudy Banks. And he put the first on one to cover himself, because otherwise he might well have got a response to say, 'Putting these people on, they can't sing', we don't pretend, we know some bloody good songs, we can't sing, we don't profess to be able to sing, we know the songs, that's the main thing. But in those days you know, the listening public might well have been upset and say, 'You're insulting our intelligence, putting these people on, their singing is terrible, they're tap-room singers', you know. But funnily enough, and to the big surprise of everybody, us included, us more than anybody, they welcomed it, there was a terrific response, and they said what a joy it was to hear country songs sung by country people. And the response was so great we did, we started doing quite a lot of broadcasting. And this coincided with the early glimmerings and stirrings of the folk song revival. And it played an important and significant role. I don't want to exaggerate, I don't want to minimise it, but it played a significant role because it just came at the right time, and we were invited round to - they started forming folk clubs and Dad and I used to go along and sing in the early ones, and that sort of thing. And then of course we recorded altogether over 60 tracks I think, for the BBC Archives. And then they started a collecting scheme and I went out collecting for the BBC in Hampshire and Sussex and that sort of thing. But that's the way it started, and it was great memories, great memories.

Andrew Ford: In your collecting, did you find that you were, obviously you would have discovered songs that you liked and that you wanted to sing yourself. What about discovering songs that you didn't want to sing? I mean was there are a sort of Copper Family type? I asked this before, but is there a type of song that the Copper Family sings at the expense of other types of songs?

Bob Copper: Oh I don't think so. It's a matter of period I suppose really. It's where it fits in the time slot, because our songs really they differ in mood a lot really, you've got lots of different moods. With the exception of protest songs, which the more you look into by the way, the protest songs, that really was started off; I did a program with Pete Seeger when I was in New York, and this started then, and it's developing even - I had an email from New York last week, about in Boston, in the local paper, they're talking about the difference, about the new wave of folk music that's coming on that people are singing for the sheer joy of singing and to express the good things and bad things in life, and more general purpose than putting the songs to prove political points, which of course comes from the Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan period. Woodie Guthrie was the starter of it, and I'm not saying that wasn't justified, they did a good work, in fact I said to Pete when we did this program, I said 'The difference between you and me, apart from you're very well known and I'm just very insignificant and don't particularly want to be well known either, but.' I said, 'you have put your talents and your repertoire to a good social purpose.' I said, 'We, I'm afraid, have been a bit dilatory, we just sing for the sheer joy of singing, we just love to sing these songs, and we love to see people join in and the atmosphere it creates.' There's no sort of political underground or gender in our songs at all, not a protest in sight. The world is a lovely place to be in. Well, so it is. And I should know, I've been here 88 years. She's all right with me.

Andrew Ford: You mentioned the folk song revival before. One of the things that happened during the folk song revival was that people got quite academic about the folk songs. People wanted to know where these songs came from, as far as possible, and who sang them and who collected them and compared all of the different variants. Did you get interested in this at that time as well?

Bob Copper: To some extent, some interesting points crop up. But by and large, I mean to say, it's just a song sung sincerely and does it convey something; the subject of a song, and I suppose it's difficult to put it into words really.

Andrew Ford: Well say, let me give you an example. Say you hear somebody else sing a song that you sing. Say you hear somebody else do Spencer the Rover and they've got a verse you don't know, does it affect the way you sing it? You say, 'Oh, I like that verse, I'll have that.'

Bob Copper: Well yes, but you keep it separate. I quite agree. I mean to say for instance, there's Uncle John used to sing A Bold Princess Royal, he was a shepherd. It's a sea-song obviously, you probably know it. But now he sang it like a shepherd would, because he was a shepherd. But now he got a different tune to it, and

On the 14th of February we sailed from the land

On the Bold Princess Royal bound for Newfoundland

We had forty bright seamen our ship's company,

So bold lie from the easter to the wester bore we.

Nice tune, nice song. Now when I was collecting, I came across a chap called, 'Wintry' was his nickname, I'm trying to think - Ned, Ned Adams, 'Wintry' Adams. He only knew one song, Bold Princess Royal, and I had a job to get it, I got it from him eventually. Cussed, a great guy he was, but a cussed old bugger. But he did sing it eventually, and I got it, and it's I think one of the best recordings. But what difference, he sang it like a bloomin' seaman and what a different tune, but the treatment, it was a song with attitude, and the difference, instead of being a soft shepherd's song it was, I'll sing it if you like, one verse:

On the 14th February we sailed from the land

On the bold Princess Royal bound for Newfoundland

We had 40 bright seamen, our ship's company,

So bold lie from the easter to the wester bore we.

Now that was a mild version of it, but when you've had about eight pints, you can sing that bugger.

Andrew Ford: It's got a sort of epic quality hasn't it.

Bob Copper: Now I still love those two verses, but it's a different treatment. But I think that answers your question.

Andrew Ford: There are different versions of songs from different parts of the country as well, I mean I guess even from different parts of Sussex, little local variants.

Bob Copper: Yes well local variants, I think the reason for that was that they forgot it, because they used to pass on, it was the old tradition you see, and like Uncle John, he learnt quite a few, they go to sheep fairs, and they'd meet shepherds from Hampshire and Kent and Surrey and around or further afield, and they'd pick up a song, and perhaps buy a pint of beer, so he'd sing it to him and that sort of thing. Now on the way home, he's singing it, and they got it a little bit different, a little bit different, and then of course they'd forget some of the words and they'd say, Oh we'll put a few here and make it up, we're not going to spoil this song for a few words, and that's the way they got moved around, that's my theory, but I'm sure it's pretty obviously what happened.

Andrew Ford: Like Chinese whispers.

Bob Copper: Yes, quite, but they couldn't read or write, half of them. Dad and Uncle John could actually. But no, lots of them were illiterate, certainly in the earlier days, and so it's all in their mind and they're not going to not sing a song just for a few lines of verse, they'd put a few words in. The same as the tune. That's how the variants happen, I think.

Andrew Ford: Bob, perhaps I can ask you one last question about the songs that you sing. These are obviously songs which have been on an almost day-to-day basis relevant to the people who sang them, whether they were about sheep or going to sea, or just what a nice day it was, looking out of the window. Do they retain their relevance, do you think, to listeners and even singers in 2003?

Bob Copper: Well I suppose it's because I'm so seeped in the old songs into the marrow of my bones by now you know really. But I find myself singing instinctively. I go out here onto the lawn on a lovely May morning, you know, and you start singing.

How pleasant and delightful on a bright summer's morn,

And so on; there's so many truths, not exactly witty but poignant sometimes, observations in those songs, and truths in those songs, that they come back to you at appropriate moments, you know. But it's a job to call them to mind when you can't, but a set of circumstances can trigger a song off in your head straight away, and it echoes, and you know that back down that long line of ancestors from which we all come, we've all got a long line of family history, and somewhere down that line there was a person who felt the same as you did about a certain thing, either the weather or rough luck or good luck, and it's great social commentary. I think that really equally, the value of the songs is not so much maybe in the entertainment side, entertainment's a certain amount, but it's also the social, historical point of view, that through these songs you can get a pretty good feeling and imagination of what it was like to live in those days,

And then we will work hard, my boys,

Until our backs do break.

Our master, he will bring us beer,

Whenever we do lag.

And so on, that's a sheep shearer's song. And all sorts of old persuasions like that. And some of them are sheer poetry, by the way, and all preserved in those old people's minds, most of them illiterate, remember, and yet

Come write me down, ye powers above,

The man who first created love,

For I've a diamond in my eye

Wherein all my joys and pleasures lie.

You know, 'comforts lie', I can't even remember the song, but what lovely poetry that was, and it was in those ignorant old men, dirty old men, chew baccers, spit down on the floor as soon as look at you, and yet they'd got in their head, they got these little bits of poetry and these tender feelings about the sadness of people lost at sea and battles and what have you. And you can build up a picture of what things were like and how they lived and they were human the same as the rest of us, and that to me is where a lot of the value of those songs are, in the social historical value.

SINGING

Andrew Ford: 'Come write me down, you powers above'; that was Bob Copper at the age of 88, Bob Copper of the Copper Family, and Come Write Me Down is available on Topic Records.

Credits

Presenter

Andrew Ford

Producer

Penny Lomax / Maureen Cooney

Saturday and Sunday 11amRepeated: Saturday and Sunday 10pm, Tuesday and Wednesday at 1am